Fire Boy
by TheNewBrawler
Summary: The child with no childhood, and the man who stole his own.


Disclaimer- Don't own Tekken.

_Character study? Writing exercise? You tell me. :P_

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_Fire Boy_

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His memories are smudged by yellow grey, each edge flickering and roughened by time, as if patched in long lines of film from long ago. Even if some of them are variegated with patches of rusty brown and it doesn't matter how sturdy he makes the walls surrounding them, they still leak through. Yellow and brown and bloody.

It is a day when he believes the walls, sealed tight, can hold the flood waters. It is a day, where he has begun to believe he is untouchable. It is a year, a year to _that_ day.

A man. No, a snake, slithers up to him and whispers he _knows._

His world is swamped in hues of violent, sick coloured yellow and the brunt of brown shows on his hands for he beats the intruder senseless. It begins to appear the man won't be telling anyone but suddenly Baek is thirsty, thirsty for things he's denied, thirsty for things that should come naturally to a man like _him._

So he takes to the streets. The dojos and training rooms and gyms open like the fragile beckon of flower petals and he plucks each one, tearing out roots that in his mind, twist and bleed like human veins. His power is of such, his fury of such, that he is the burning stroke of summer and the killing freeze of winter, for each of these things maim and dry and chill and he is, after all, a killer.

He isn't untouchable. He is unstoppable.

His self-made trail is hitched by a break in a dingy American dojo. The master is out and the tutor is weak. The children scatter, the teenagers falling below his blows but the act is bloodless and bleak and aimless in its destruction. The true master isn't at home, isn't here to challenge and sate. The only remnant of him is a small, quivering replica that blinks up at him below messy black bangs and even if the wide dark eyes are glossed with tears, the boy doesn't look away.

He is seized with a sudden impulse of madness. The child's mind is tender, foam like, free of blocks. This child, who dares to stand near him in the holds of his rage, garners his attention and he wonders how the boy would fare in the grey yellow walls of his own dojo.

He takes one step towards his goal but the mother starts screaming and there is more noise, more clutter and panic here, then in any of his previous haunts and so instead he flees, streaking through the carnage and past the kitchen where the woman cowers and into the crisp spring of the evening air.

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The tournament, despite the grandeur of its title, is surprisingly small, grubby to behold. The brawlers that gather in their colourful masses are alien to him and he makes no effort to interact. Instead he burrows himself in his hauntingly hollowed head, for he is aware of waking up and seeing the world, the people in it, the witnesses of his actions, in horrid clarity and colour.

The man is there. The father of the son with the brave eyes. Upon seeing Baek, his breathing becomes ragged, the fabled dragon that is said to sleep within his blood stirring to life. Baek believes fully that he can finish this arrogant, soft, domestic man.

He is defeated.

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Childhood is a gift. A gift he had forcefully denied himself. Each child he trains, each eager and well-formed face, ignorant of strife, does little to move or inspire. He drives each and every one into the ground with the militant, heartless bark of his voice until they become submissive shadows or they skulk back into the sunshine.

A scrawny thirteen year old snatches at his pockets. The moon is an etched, milky sphere against a cold sky. The child writhes and spits under his iron grip. Red hair. Bright, blinding rust red. Too old eyes in an unlined face. Rags on a skeletal frame. The child with no childhood glowers at the man who stole his own, and Baek smiles.

Any child is in need of molding. He understands this. The boy's trust is hard to earn. Even more difficult to drill in are the virtues of dependence. The child splutters and swears and flays his patience to the raw nerve but he persists, infused with a sudden strength and stoicism he has only ever possessed in his darker moments and it makes him feel _stronger._

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Each year, each leap in the breaking in of the child's spirit, adds another weave of grey to his hair, another hard indent around his eyes.

He lets the boy grow into a wild and headstrong man. Tsks and shakes his head at the beaten up second hand bike and bad choices, as it is his duty as self-named guardian. But occasionally, he chooses to turn a blind eye to the boy's pursuit of pleasure and poorly dressed women and money clasped in bloody fists. He allows it to stretch on over a few weeks, feigning ignorance as his spirited, shoddy student sneaks in late. But only until he can swoop in unannounced, bailing out the list of atrocities he's been keeping locked away; each cigarette smoked, each hustle dealt, each unwholesome girl with her shirt open. He scolds the boy until his ego is black and blue and he is left, near groveling, at his feet and Baek receives what he wished for all along.

The fierce flame of the boy's spirit, no matter how incorrigible to others, will always rest in embers in the palm of his hand.

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The young man without a childhood is hidden beneath countless tangles of wire and white, and beneath the bandages, the dry brown crust of blood. Baek lingers by the beside morning, noon and night, watching the narrow chest rise and fall, the LCD palpitating in temperamental waves, the thin filament wire in his forearm feeding his student whatever anesthetic it is that can cull the bristling flare in his chest.

He allows his hand to waver over the boy's forehead that is sticky with fever and pain, the young man's body flushed with the devil's ramifications.

When the boy opens his eyes, they are grey and watery and afraid. He is still pulled under by the tempting smog of the drugs and the nurses whisper and witter around him. As Baek enters, he watches them part as if he is Moses and them the turbulent, stubborn waves of the red sea.

As soon as his child lays his eyes on his master, they electrify.

He is the inspiration, the motive, the _Master._

He is the one. The only _one._

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The resistance is his idea. Of course, it is his Fire Boy who articulates it, who finally absorbs the prodding and pondering and subtle hints, like flames first licking the ends of dry kindling. Outside of his frequent haunts, his blood talon is stern, respectful to his master and his carefully formed plans are surprisingly logical. Baek nods, supports, watches over each pillage and plunder and act of benevolent terrorism. The beast inside him is sated but his Fire Boy, despite his new scars (_bullets against fists_) and fresh burns _(from the arson of the Mishima research facility, brightening up the sky in dusky orange)_ his eyes are innocent.

Like any puppet, fire boy dances to the pull of the string.

And like any puppet, he is oblivious.

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Somewhere along the line, Baek is separated from his student.

The hissing crackle in his own chest comes undone.

He brings each of the grunts down, each strike of his leg as lethal as a bullet. He aims for stomachs, for necks, for kneecaps. It is a ruthless display. He must counsel Fire Boy that such dirty tricks are hardly suitable for any honorable fight.

When they are reunited, Fire Boy mistakes their enemy's blood for Baek's and the panic setting in his eyes pleases his master. His student binds his wounds, hissing and spitting and swearing like a creature possessed but there is a very visible shake in his bones. Baek conditions his voice into a low, soothing whisper until the inferno dwindles to a single spark, but that evening Fire Boy refuses to sleep and keeps a vigilant watch out of the window, shadowing his master's bed.

Baek stares through the indigo shade of settling night and wonders when he started to care.

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We reap what we sow.

He wonders if Fire Boy, as he grows old, will be tormented by memories cloaked in queasy gold. Whether the strings embedded in his skin will continue to shift, even if the puppet master lies slumped at his theatre.

The world is decked in grey yellow, for the sky is eaten up by pollution and fire. Brown and bloody crust on Baek's head, and his hat, tossed askew on the ocean. The warehouses are blunt dents on the horizon and what a grey, unimaginative place to die.

His father falls and rises, falls and rises, before his eyes; in the sky, in the sea, reflected in the blood on his hands. Only this time the blood is his own. The reek of whiskey on his father's breath is only spilt alcohol in the gutter. The sound of chaos and cries and excuses in his ears is only the rush of his own heartbeat.

His body is piped full of bullets. The tangle of heat inside licks each and every one, spreading the pain like widening plague sores and he retches and gags and waits for the end.

But there is water on his cheeks, dousing the heat inside, and a cleansing rain falls from his student's eyes.

Fingers wind deep into his chest. The bullets are shallow, but have missed severe places but his heart struggles, his fire diminishing, his body pushed too long and too far.

A pounding on his breast. Fire Boy stares down at him, mouth set, eyes alive, palms pressed down over Baek's heart. Another pound, another hit. His heart jumps and stammers. The strings fall from his student and latch into his own skin.

His lips are parted, and Hwoarang breathes fire into his lungs.


End file.
